“…my recent longish piece, describing how hyperinflation might happen in the United States, clearly struck a nerve… Essentially, I argued that Treasury bonds are the New and Improved Toxic Assets. I argued that, if there was a run on Treasuries, the Federal Reserve—in its anti-deflationary zeal, and its efforts to prop up bond market prices—would over-react, and set off a run on commodities. This, I argued, would trigger hyperinflation… However, there were two issues that many readers had a hard time wrapping their minds around, with regards to a hyperinflationary event…”

“As a jaded observer of the livestock industry, I just sighed when I learned the scale of the current salmonella-tainted egg recall: 380 million eggs, distributed under 10 different brands in 17 different states, all from a single producer — Iowa-based Wright County Farms. Another day, another industrial-ag gaffe imperiling the health of millions… But then William Neuman’s New York Times piece hipped me to the name of the owner of Wright County Farms: one Austin “Jack” DeCoster. That’s when my sigh became a gasp. Jack DeCoster is one of the most reviled names in industrial agriculture…”

“…As predicted last year, the people most hurt by the price increases are those who can least afford them. The used-car market usually attracts people who need transportation on a budget, who cannot afford to buy new. By destroying a quarter’s worth of trade-ins in three weeks and permanently taking them off the market, the Obama administration has forced an artificial inflation by supply restriction. Moreover, they did so by subsidizing new-car sales that would have occurred anyway, eating up three billion dollars in taxpayer money…”

“…just try ‘income tax without income.’ Just how bad is the California state budget? According to Doug Ross, they’re taxing people on income they have yet to receive. Last year, to balance its books, California paid a bunch of people not in money, but IOUs that the state would make good at some vague, undefined date. …But the state still needs money, so it’s demanding that the recipients pay income taxes on the money they’re owed…”

“Thousands of British online banking customers have fallen victim to a sophisticated attack by cyber criminals who have stolen thousands of pounds from their accounts. About 3,000 online banking customers have been victims of a computer virus attack that empties their accounts while showing them fake statements so the scam goes undetected…”

“A struggling family facing foreclosure has stumbled upon what is considered to be the Holy Grail of comic books in their basement – a fortuitous find that could fetch upwards of a quarter million dollars at auction…”

I’m having a hard time figuring out how this situation could possibly be more evil:

“The following is a direct translation of the below Persian document:

‘…We call on all our sisters who are virgins, who are between the ages of 12 and 35 to cooperate with us. Each of our sisters who signs up will be bound by a two year contract with the province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan and will be required to spend at least 25 days of each month temporarily married to those brothers who are on pilgrimage. The period of the contract will be considered as a part of the employment experience of the applicant. The period of each temporary marriage can be anywhere between 5 hours to 10 days. The prices are as follows…’ “

” ‘By reaching into virtually every sector of economic life, government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace and making it harder to raise capital and create new businesses,’ said Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg at a speech in Washington in late June.

“…’We don’t know what to expect from Washington. That’s essentially what Seidenberg is saying,’ said Shlaes, author of the influential book ‘The Forgotten Man,’ which argues that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s punitive and unpredictable policies toward business prolonged, rather than solved, the Great Depression.”

[Instapundit readers have chimed in here.]

“Based on the results of the tech team’s tests, we believe that optimization is not a good deal for most consumers. Our tests show that the service did not improve performance, and there are a number of free ways to do many of the same tasks (though you may be out of luck if you just have to have those exclusive “100 system tweaks”). We’ve listed a few of them below.

“Yes, having Geek Squad download your Windows updates can save you time, but the tech team found that the service was inconsistent. Best Buy hadn’t finished installing all the updates, and of course, a power cable was missing from one of the computers. The computers we received still had the trialware installed – only the shortcuts were removed from the desktop…”